Assignment 2: Plan

For the assignment, I decided I wanted to use flowers in a pot/vase in a natural setting with something man-made to contrast.

I started off looking for different themes and compositions doing some quick sketches. The first sketch doesn't have enough going on, although the contrasting textures would be interesting. I can also imagine after my previous A2 studies, that a whole A2 drawing filled with tree bark would be quite a tedious task! It would also end up being quite boring to look at. I then decided to go for a landscape scene with the flowers as a 'prop', but still the main subject. This was quite a difficult task to find a way to draw to the eye to the flowers, however. 

The third box was too open spaced. Too much negative space made the flowers look isolated and not as cheerful as they should be!

I quite liked the next sketch with the tractor, but found there was a balance/conflict between the tractor and flowers fighting for the viewer's attention, especially when the perspective makes the flowers and tractor look a similar size. The flowers were not the main subject and so I tried out new compositions without the tractor. 

I finally found a really good composition, which had strong directional light coming towards the flowers. (Sixth box; second down and third across). I added overlap between the tree and flowers for contrast in texture, for depth/perspective, and to lose negative space to add interest. The man-made fence in the background is good as it's subtle and not too distracting. The flowers really are the main focus in this composition. I liked the layers of trees in the background, too. However, I thought there might have been a bit too much space to the left of the flowers. I cropped this sketch (see the bottom image below) to make the flowers bigger in the picture, to make the directional light more centred and to get rid of the unwanted negative space. 

From recent exercises, I had decided to go for coloured pencils as my medium. I wanted to achieve a lot of detail and texture in this drawing and to use a natural selection of colours. The oil pastels may have been too bright and false looking, as would the felt-tip pens, and soft pastels wouldn't have created enough detail for me either.